In its war against slow Internet speeds, Google now wants to arm customers with information about how well or poorly their service providers are performing.

The company’s YouTube division on Thursday for the first time rated U.S. Internet service providers in its “Video Quality Report,” giving people the ability to compare how well the services are delivering YouTube’s videos.

In New York City, for instance, YouTube rates Verizon’s FiOS internet service and Cablevision’s Optimum Online as “HD Verified,” meaning customers of those services should be able to stream YouTube videos in high definition (at least 720p quality) with “quick load times” at least 90% of the time.

Time Warner Cable was rated “Standard Definition,” meaning its New York customers are able to watch YouTube videos in at least 360p with “moderate load times” at least 90% of the time.

In Chicago, RCN Corporation and Comcast’s Xfinity service receive the top rating while AT&T’s U-Verse and CenturyLink are rated a level down.

Google isn’t the first Internet company to try to use data to prod ISPs into providing faster service. Netflix has its own, more critical “ISP Speed Index” that ranks ISPs by country. Cablevision comes in at the top among major U.S. providers, while AT&T’s U-Verse and CenturyLink again come in lower.

Netflix also lists broadband providers’ benchmark speeds but presents them in a starker format. Google uses information supplied by cable and telephone companies to help divvy their services up into three broad categories, while Netflix relies almost entirely on its own data to rank each broadband company from first to worst based on the average speeds it observes during peak streaming hours.

Netflix’s approach has helped it single broadband companies out for praise or criticism. The company used its speed index in a filing to the Federal Communications Commission, for instance, to argue that Comcast and others were running their networks inefficiently, degrading its service. Google has said less about the issue.

Google’s video quality report is just one way the Web search giant is badgering telecom companies into providing faster download speeds. Another is Google Fiber, the ultra-fast Internet access service it is rolling out to more cities nationwide; the competition is prompting some ISPs to upgrade their own offerings.